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Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
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Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859 - July 7, 1930), but best known as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
is the British author most famously known for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which
are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction. He also wrote the novel
The Lost World. Lesser known are his major historical novels, The White Company, Sir Nigel, Micah Clarke,
Uncle Bernac, The Refugees, and The Great Shadow; Doyle also wrote plays and romances. |
He was born in Edinburgh and sent to Jesuit preparatory school at the age of nine, and by the
time he left the school in 1875, he had firmly rejected Catholicism and probably Christianity
in general, to become an agnostic. From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at Edinburgh University,
including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham). Following his term at
University he served as a ship's doctor on a voyage to the West African coast, and then in 1882 he set
up a practice in Plymouth. His medical practice was unsuccessful; while waiting for patients he began
writing stories. It was only after he subsequently moved his practice to Southsea that he began to
indulge more extensively in literature. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet which
appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes.
In 1885 he married Louise Hawkins, who suffered from tuberculosis and eventually died in 1906. He married
Miss Jean Leckie in 1907, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897 but had maintained a platonic
relationship with out of loyalty to his first wife.
In 1890 Doyle studied the eye in Vienna, and in 1891 moved to London to set up a practice as an ocularist.
This also gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: 'I think of slaying
Holmes ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.' In December 1893 he did so,
with Holmes and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty apparently plunging to their deaths together over a waterfall
in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry led him to bring the character back--Doyle returned to the story,
saying that Holmes had climbed back up the cliff afterwards. Holmes eventually appeared in 56 short stories and
four of Doyle's novels (he has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors, as well).
Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the century and the condemnation from around the world
over Britain's conduct, Conan Doyle to wrote a short pamphlet titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and
Conduct which was widely translated. Conan Doyle believed that it was this pamphlet that resulted in his being
knighted and appointed as Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey in 1902. During the early years of the twentieth century
Sir Arthur twice ran for Parliament, once in Edinburgh and once in the Border Burghs, but although he received a
respectable vote he was not elected.
Doyle also caused two cases to be reopened. The first case in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian
lawyer named George Edalji, who'd allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were dead
set on Edalji's guilt, though the mutilations continued even after their suspect was jailed. It is important to
note that partially as a result of this case the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907. So not only
did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped to establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice.
The second case of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old
woman in 1908 -- excited Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense
that Slater was framed. Sadly, one would not say either enjoyed the same resolution as Holmes' clients
In his later years, Doyle became involved with Spiritualism, to the extent that he wrote a Professor Challenger
novel on the subject, The Land of Mist. One of the odder aspects of this involvement was his book The Coming of
the Fairies (1921): He was apparently totally convinced of the veracity of the Cottingley fairy photographs,
which he reproduced in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies.
Arthur Conan Doyle is buried in the Church Yard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, England.
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